Refugees
by KiwiKugai
Summary: Three individuals from an alternative universe attempting to return home find themselves stranded in a familiar, but different location. With no chance to return home, their options are limited. Not very good at writing summaries, this little tale has been running around in my head for a while. WIP.
1. Chapter 1

Light was provided mostly by the consoles and a few strip lights in the cockpit of the vessel. otherwise, it was dark.

The figure in the pilots seat glanced down occasionally at the small array of monitors, one largish one in front and two small ones to each side, lights glowing in various shades each side of them marking the controls and telltales, but mostly she kept her eyes on the view ahead, looking out of the expanse of armored window that curved around and above her. Her hands twitched slightly on the controls as she maintained the crafts position in the conduit. Barely half again as wide as the ship that passed though it, the tunnel walls glittered green with the swirling vortex of energies that had created it as the small craft made its one way journey. Suddenly, like a wave, a band of golden energy rippled across the vortex. The ship rocked slightly from it and she corrected the slight deviation with gentle pressure on the control stick in her right hand.

"Shields holding at one hundred percent. Slight decrease in velocity as the wave passed, but back to recommended velocity. No damage to systems or ship" came the voice of the person seated behind her to the right at the engineering station,

Another voice, seated at the larger sciences/system station spoke up after a moment of tapping away at the console. "Wormhole stable ahead. Aft sensors detect wormhole collapse commencing." after a minute or two of further tapping, she spoke again. "Confirmed."

"Looks like they detonated the device" muttered the dark haired engineer.

"Indeed."

"Time" barked the pilot.

"forty-five seconds to wormhole exit. Sixty seconds to wormhole collapse."

Ignoring the muttered curse from the dark haired figure and fighting down the urge to advance the throttle control under her left hand, the only outward indication from the pilot was the clenching of her jaw. Accelerating wouldn't help, indeed it would prove fatal. Precise calculations had determined the optimum speed at which they could pass safely through the wormhole. Too fast or too slow and their journey would come to an abrupt, fatal end.

Seconds ticked by, then the science console let out a burp of warning. The tall blond haired figure quickly read the information. "Rate of collapse increasing. Time to wormhole exit 10 seconds, time to wormhole collapse 15 seconds" she said in a cool, dispassionate voice. Behind her at the engineering station, she heard the squeak of leather as the dark haired figure gripped tightly on the armrests of her seat. Glancing to her right, she saw the dark red head of the woman in the pilots seat jerk slightly, otherwise, there was no other reaction. There was no point really, she knew like the other two that at this point it would be useless to react. They would either get out before the wormhole collapsed, or they would be caught and crushed.

The pilot gritted her teeth and once again fought down the urge to slam the throttle control forward.

"Five seconds to boundary" came the cool voice behind her, steadying her, making her breath deeper. Ahead of her she could see it now, a somewhat imperfect disk of dull glowing white. She watched as it rapidly grew before her, filled the view. Then, with a shuddering jolt and a kaleidoscope of colours, they were through and out the other side. Without being told, she now slammed the throttle forward into its stops. The ship surged forward, rapidly accelerating to its maximum sublight velocity as, behind them, the wormhole collapsed in spectacular fashion, hurling an expanding shockwave of energy outwards in all directions. Buffeted, but by this stage far away enough from the source of the wave for it not to cause serious trouble, the small craft yawed and tumbled slightly before quick, expert hands brought it back under control and slowed the craft to a halt.

The three figures in the gloomily lit cockpit sat silent for a few minutes, calming themselves down from what was, to all intense and purpose, a damned close call.

"Status" the redhead said after a moment. The dark haired engineer was the first to reply.

"Shields as one hundred percent, engines and warp drive operational. No damage to ships systems" she got out. She gave a quick cough to clear her throat, then continued. "Weapons systems operational, hull integrity at one hundred percent, life support functioning normally."

The pilot grunted before asking the next obvious question. "Alright then, where are we?"

The blond headed figure began tapping away at her console. "Running a full sensor sweep will take several minutes, though initial scans confirm that we are close to our intended exit point. I will run a full comparison scan to determine our exact location."

"Take your time. After that ride, I'm not moving us from here until we know exactly where we are."

"Captain," said the dark haired woman, "Far be it for me to suggest hiding, but don't you think it would be advisable to …..."

"I get your point" she said. Touching a set of controls set into the small control panel just in front of the control column, she activated the small vessels cloak. "No need to add to our current problems by inviting in nosy guests until we figure out just where the hell we are."

Several minutes went by before the blond haired figure stopped typing, sat back and looked pensive. Her silence was telling.

"Alright," said the pilot with a sigh "Lets have it."

"We are in the Delta Quadrant."

"But?" said the dark haired figure as she heard the hesitation in the science officers voice/

"Harmonic resonance indicates that we have not returned to our universe. I have double checked the readings and indications are that we have crossed over into a previously unknown and unexplored version of our universe."

" _FUCK!_ " snarled the dark haired figure. Neither of the other two in the darkened cockpit bothered to answer. There was no point – her curse spoke for all of them.


	2. Chapter 2

The blond woke, and was instantly aware of the absence of one figure. Moving slowly so not to wake the sleeping form of the dark haired woman, she slipped off the large bed and out of their sleeping quarters. She saw the redhead sitting in the darkness of the lounge area and approached. The darkness was no barrier to her, her enhanced vision allowed to see the other woman sitting in the chair, a half empty glass in her hand resting on its arm. She observed the brooding form for a minute before making her way slowly to her and dropping into a crouch in front of her. The brooding woman looked down at her for a moment before taking a swig from the glass, ice tinkling in the bottom of it before she spoke.

"If you're going to tell me that this wasn't my fault, don't bother" she said acerbically.

The blond didn't speak immediately, she just glanced at the redhead who refused to meet her eyes. Slowly, she reached out and settled her hand on top of the one holding the glass, causing the woman to finally look at her. "This. Was. Not. Your. Fault." she said, spacing her words evenly and without any inflection. She continued before the woman had time to react or refute her words, " _We_ knew the risks when we decided to make the attempt. _We_ knew the possibility existed that, despite our best efforts to reverse the effects of The Sweep and return us to our universe, the possibility existed that we could not exactly match the universal variant and harmonics. _We_ made the choice."

The redhead snorted.

The blond sighed, "I sometimes wonder if what Lord Albus said about you is not closer to the truth than you care to contemplate." The redhead raised an eyebrow in query. "Before we left to attempt our return journey he spoke to us. He said has great respect for you as a leader and a warrior, but he said to us that he sometimes suspected you took too much on your shoulders, expected too much of those under your command – too much of yourself. He wondered if you did not have a martyr complex."

Oh?"

"I refuted that of course, but considering your reaction now, I begin to wonder. You expect too much of yourself."

"I promised to..."

"I am aware of what you promised, and I have never questioned the dedication you have to the tasks you set yourself. But there comes a time beloved when you must accept that you cannot control everything, that some things are beyond your abilities. I know" she said, raising her hand to forestall her, "You hold the old adage that Starship Captains are invulnerable and infallible..."

"... because they _have_ to be." she finished with a wry look.

The blond inclined her head, the merest hint of an amused smile on her face "But there are limits, and sometimes I ….. _we_ worry that you fail to see those limits."

"I promised to get us back, get us _home_." she said in a soft, small voice. "Six years, _six years_ we were stuck in that universe, _two_ of them as slaves to that … that ….. _animal_ and his ... ' _Experiments_ ' before we were able to break free and join Albus' forces. And we spent the last four in that hell of a civil war. I swore I'd get us home when he was finally able to overthrow his nephew and reestablish the proper rule of law, and just when I think I've got us back, and helped him destroy that abomination of technology, I find we're nowhere near where we should be." She slumped back in her seat. "I failed us."

"You have not failed us. We _are_ home."

" _NO! We're not!"_ She shouted, tossing the half full glass against the nearest bulkhead. "We're in some damned _other_ universe!"

"One that is similar to our own. One that, granted, is also temporally out of sync with ours enough to have placed us back in time close to the stardate when we were captured by The Sweep." She sighed. "I know you wished to return us to where we belong, and I and the others who worked all those long months to reverse The Sweeps effect did our best, but you must accept that we are here and there is no going back."

"She's right" came the voice of the dark haired woman, who had quietly entered the room and begun cleaning up the broken glass and spilled liquid before she went over to the redhead. She slipped in behind the redheads chair and loosely wrapped her arms about her.

"Look," she said after a drawn out moments silence, "I've no fondness for the damned situation we're in either. All in all, I'd rather we _had_ made it back to our own universe. But the point is, we're here, and now we either can crawl into some corner of the Delta Quadrant, hide and beat ourselves up about it, or we can do what we always do."

"And what's that?"

"Make the best of a bad situation, and turn it to our advantage."

"And just _how_ , prey tell, do we do that?!"

The two women shared a look before the blond rose to her feet and went over to the wall console. A few touches on the controls brought up both an image and information that she had gleaned from the small crafts powerful sensors. She turned back and raised an eyebrow.

The redhead took only a moment to understand what her partners were silently suggesting. " _Surely_ you _can't_ be serious?!" When all she got from the blond was a familiar quirked eyebrow and from the dark haired engineer a lopsided grin, she swore.


End file.
